While the counting is far from over, returns for the Tokyo Metrpolitan elections are coming in and it looks like a landslide for the DPJ.

Polls closed at 8:00 p.m. As of 10:00 p.m., according to NHK:
- The DPJ has won 41 seats and an unaffiliated candidate won, giving the opposition camp 42 seats so far
- The LDP is on pace to do much worse than the 48 seats it held, having won only 7 so far. It’s coalition partner New Komeito has 4.
- No other party has won a seat.
- The opposition leads 42 - 11 with 74 districts not yet reporting.

- The bizarre Happiness Realization Party (幸福実現党) got zero votes (so far) in Suginami, which is only slightly more than I would have predicted.
- Here in Nakano, DPJ first-timers swept, with former secretary to Lower House member Akira Nagatsuma, Nishizawa finishing first and Yoshida finishing second. An LDP candidate finished last here.
- An energetic 26 year-old, Kurishita, beat LDP oldie and local Secretary General Uchida in an apparently close one, despite Kunio Hatoyama speaking on behalf of Uchida.
- Former gravure model Mai Goto lost in Shinjuku.
- Ishihara (Nobuteru, not the Gov.) speaking for LDP. I don’t know why, but he reminds me of a reject from a Monty Python revival. LDP is the only party that does not have its logo and slogan behind its speaker, instead having the old school candidate list - they might not want people to see that tonight.

- Apparently 44% of the vote has gone to the DPJ as of 10:00.

10:15 p.m.
68 districts not reporting.
DPJ 44
LDP 10
Komeito 4
Unaffiliated 1
45-14 Opposition camp

10:33 p.m.
52 districts not reporting.
DPJ 46
LDP 18
Komeito 7
JCP 2
Unaffiliated 2
50-25 Opposition camp

- 64 seats are necessary for a majority. At this point, projections for the probably victorious DPJ are between 50 and 57 seats, not enough to run the show alone, but much better than the 34 seats the DPJ got last time and a big dropoff for the LDP any way you shake it.
- It seems the DPJ won their races resoundingly, while the squeakers went to the LDP or Komeito. A shovelful of early DPJ results came up, but the ruling camp is making up some ground as more of the races for which counting is necessary come in. That said, the opposition still has twice the old boys’ seat count so far.

- Poor Ishihara really looks like he wants to take his fake tan and go home. The opposition even looks better groomed than the ruling camp, which is saying something when you think that they have the JCP on their side.

- New DPJ man from Setagaya looks nervous as he can be - smile so forced, he could be in New Komeito, who have been startling the crap out of me every morning on my way to work by screeching “ohayo gozaimasu” at the top of their lungs as they bow in an inhumanly rapid and deep manner next to their orange-shirted sign holders, who all have painful-looking smiles and hair that doesn’t look lacquered, but doesn’t move, like less-shiny Jimmy Johnsons. (It’s an American football joke, sorry.) What percentage of the ￥1 Komeito charges for their fliers at rallies goes to hair products and manufacturers of blaze orange clothing?

Blaze orange - it’s not just for hunting anymore.

10:50 p.m.
33 districts not reporting.
DPJ 50
LDP 23
Komeito 15
JCP 4
Unaffiliated 2
56-38 Opposition camp

- In Suginami, the Happiness Realization Party has 1,000 votes. It’s scary that there are 1,000 people not only that dumb, but that spiteful of their fellow man. Let’s be clear, they’re a party of fearmongering to the ill-informed and not particularly bright, and bizarre, irrational ideology at the expense of the country, which makes them a bit worse than the Abe and his buddies in the LDP.

For more on the Happiness Realization Party, listen to the latest Seijigiri as you watch the results come in.

- While the LDP is winning seats, they have not finished first in any district so far. All of their seats are for second or third-place finishes or lower.

- New Komeito’s Takakura is listed as second in Nakano, having tied with Yoshida at about 10,500 votes. He has the aforementioned “smile” and hair.

- With the DPJ’s success, I’m looking for their Sugimura Taizo, but I haven’t seen him yet.

11:15 p.m.
12 districts not reporting.
DPJ 52
LDP 33
Komeito 21
JCP 7
Unaffiliated 2
61-54 Opposition camp

- Wow. No landlside, this. With the ruling camp taking so many of the closer races, it’s getting hot. The LDP really owes Komeito for doing what Komeito does - getting out the vote. I haven’t seen any demographics yet, but I’d bet the DPJ is suffering from the same thing more reformist or liberal parties always do, especially if they appeal to younger voters: Young people and liberals don’t vote.

- There was an LDP surge, but the results coming in now look like a race between the new religion Buddhists and the Communists.

- Hand it to NHK, they do try to keep some balance, they keep interviewing the SDP spokesman, as if it mattered that the SDP was going from zero seats to zero seats. They’re talking to one of the few members of the People’s New Party, too, who has the unfortunate habit of mumbling and talking through his teeth. Beats feeling the need to shout.

11:25 p.m.
7 districts not reporting.
DPJ 52
LDP 36
Komeito 22
JCP 7
Tokyo Life Network 1
Unaffiliated 2
62-58 Opposition camp

- The Tokyo Life Network, a new party last time around, got themselves a seat - a dropoff from the four they had.

- The ruling camp has gone from 70 to 58, the opposition from 55 to 62 so far. However, those second and third-place finishes are adding up to a close race. In the end, it doesn’t matter how much you win by or even if you don’t actually win (as in finish first) anywhere - a seat is a seat.
This is worrying as the LDP will take this as a message that the people still like what they’re doing, even though that might not actually have been true for years.

- The Opposition doesn’t quite have a chance to turn the tables, but it can come pretty close and can certainly get a majority.

- Music Japan is on now. Perhaps the only thing more insipid than lip-synched J-Pop is a vapid conversation about it complete with clips from the embarrassingly bad, self-consciously “cool” videos. It’s like an entire industry is stuck in Color Me Badd’s heyday.

11:36 p.m.
Six more to go.
DPJ 52
LDP 36
Komeito 22
JCP 7
Net 2
Unaffiliated 2
SDP 0
63-58 Opposition camp

- Shocking! Aya Ueto and her friends all like sweet foods. Now she’s performing a pseudo-ska song. Where’s the remote? . . . And Mute.

11:46 p.m.
Four more to go.
DPJ 54
LDP 36
Komeito 22
JCP 7
Net 2
Unaffiliated 2
SDP 0
65-58 Opposition camp

- And the DPJ and their allies have a majority. Goodbye, LDP/Komeito rule of Tokyo.

- For an amusing discussion that is at least partly on Happy Science, the inane cult behind the Happiness Realization Party, check out this thread on Mutant Frog. The group’s defender pretty much gives you all the proof you’ll need that my calling them an inane cult is probably an understatement.
Adamu has been liveblogging as well, starting about the same time I did.

12:05 a.m.
Two more to go.
DPJ 54
LDP 38
Komeito 22
JCP 7
Net 2
Unaffiliated 2
SDP 0
65-60 Opposition camp

- Well, not much will change with two votes left. From epic ineptitude on the national stage to deeply unpopular and boneheaded ideas more locally (Shinginko Tokyo = Money toilet to make even Keynes flinch), the LDP and, by extension, Komeito (as their power comes from their affiliation with the LDP) have apparently worn out their brand, but not as badly as I expected. I thought the opposition had a real shot at a full reversal, or close to it. That is, getting 69 or 70 seats.
It was telling that so very few first-place finishers were from the ruling coalition. If we can draw anything from these results at this point, it’s that the opposition’s margin of victory was greater than the seat count would show. I’m not going to toss around the word “mandate,” especially as the opposition’s victory was as much the ruling camp’s accomplishment as their own. Look for this to be at least a partial harbinger of what is to come next month in the general election. (Or at least most likely next month, could be a little bit later.)

- In an observation indicative of little, I was pleased to see that my voting-eligible neighbors chose not a single person who used the bad idea of Tokyo hosting the 2016 Olympics to campaign. My dream would be that the opposition realizes the prefecture should cut its losses and drop the idea, withdrawing the bid immediately, but that won’t happen.

12:20 a.m.
One more to go.
DPJ 54
LDP 38
Komeito 22
JCP 8
Net 2
Unaffiliated 2
SDP 0
66-60 Opposition camp

12:25 a.m.
And the final totals are:
DPJ 54
LDP 38
Komeito 23
JCP 8
Net 2
Unaffiliated 2
SDP 0
66-61 Opposition camp

. . . as New Komeito takes the last seat to be reported. Not a landslide, as I said above, but a clear majority and an even clearer victory for the forces of the opposition. As my colleague Ken Worsley points out, perhaps one of the best results of this election is that Governor Ishihara will have a much tougher time getting his less bright ideas through (like making a vanity project of highly dubious merit possibly the most high-profile endeavor in which the prefecture is involved.) Let’s hope the DPJ and their allies can do things both differently and better.

For the political nerds, the changes (old numbers to new numbers of seats):
DPJ: 35 -> 54
LDP: 48 -> 38
New Komeito: 22 -> 23
JCP: 13 -> 8
Net: 4-> 2
Unaffiliated: 3 -> 2
SDP: 0 -> 0
Other minor parties: 1 -> 0
Happiness Realization Party: N/A -> 0

So, the only unambiguously successful party was the DPJ, with all of the smaller parties stuck with the same duality, viz. influence (should they have any) going the opposite way of their numbers.

The DPJ’s success, though, is something to be proud of - a jump of 20 seats to 54, six more than the LDP had last time around, gives them the luxury of ignoring the Tokyo Life Network if they want to and keeping a bare majority. (I’m joking.) The fact that so many of the DPJ’s candidates were elected and that they did so well with relatively few candidates, bodes well for the national stage.

The more I think about it, though, the more I start to think that New Komeito might have gained a bit of power. Sure, their meal ticket can no longer bring home as much bacon, but they’ll be able to demand a larger share of what bacon there is unless they just split now that there’s not even a bare political reason to stay together unless the general election goes quite differently.

And with that, I bid you good night.

The Next Morning:

- Every New Komeito candidate, all 23 of them, was successful.
- Only four DPJ candidates did not win a seat.
- The LDP was the least successful party in percentages, with 20 of their candidates getting the cold shoulder from the voters of Tokyo.
- Make that the least successful other than the dwindling, disappearing SDP, whose role is unclear in the current political climate. Why do they even exist? Of course, the Happiness Realization Party also pulled a big zero, but their role is clear: they’re nuts. Cults need no other purpose.
- Actually, the LDP’s win percentage was better than Net’s, too. Net lost half of the races it entered.

- I corrected the DPJ changes. NHK said they’d had 34 seats, but the Yomiuri this morning said 35. Even with that adjustment, I have one more seat in the Tokyo total this time.